I did my stanard stop smoking technique and spend a lot of time on direct suggestion that she could give up, that she had the ability. When I finished the session I asked her if she was now a non smoker. She said 'Well I'm not sure. I don't want to smoke now, but I am worried it is too easy, it won't last'. And off she went.

A few days she called to say that she had started smoking the next day. I thought 'Oh damn, I have failed her!' But then said that  the next day she just decided that she could not smoke in the bedroom any more. And the next day she decided that she could not smoke in the house any more. I suggested that she would soon not be able to smoke anywhere any more, and she agreed that she felt that way too.

I thought it was very interesting how her mind was reconciling the conflicting need to stop smoking with her own concerns that it couldn't just be that easy, so she was programming herself to give up in stages.

We traced this back to an incident in school when she was about seven years old. She was asked a question, did not know the answer and felt that the whole class was looking at her. She just wanted to run away and yet could not escape. These old feelings are now triggered every time she finds herself in a similar situation.

We did some inner child work in regression to clear the old memory. I find that nearly every time I have  a client with a blushing problem it is the result of an incident at school. I wonder if teachers are taught about this in their training, and if they are aware that small incidents can have lifetime effects.

We traced this back to an incident in school when she was about seven years old. She was asked a question, did not know the answer and felt that the whole class was looking at her. She just wanted to get away and yet could not escape. These old feelings are now triggered every time she finds herself in a similar situation.

We did some inner child work in regression to clear the old memory. I find that nearly every time I have  a client with a blushing problem it is the result of an incident at school. I wonder if teachers are taught about this in their training, and if they are aware that small incidents can have lifetime effects.

To test your own sense of proprioception try the following exercise. Close your eyes. Then extend one arm and then wave your hand around at random in circles and jab it out all over the place, move your hand above your head and behind your back. Keep moving your hand around and at the same time move your head, shake and nod and turn it in circles. Then move your hand to your face and place your index finger right on the tip of your nose. Most people can do that with absolute accuracy, even though it does not involve any of the other senses. With practice you can improve the sensitivity of this sense. For example, become aware of the position of inside of your left knee. Then focus your attention on that area and imagine that it is become hot, or that you can feel a tingle in that area.

This ability can improve with practice. You can then try to become aware of your own abdominal muscles, or your back muscles. Getting in touch with your own body can help with sports performance and with easing muscle pains. Once you can identify will all the major parts of your body, relaxation become much easier. And relaxation of the body leads to relaxation of anxieties so it is worth exploring this ability we all have.

There is another use for affirmations, however. An affirmation can serve two purposes. It can work as a positive suggestion to yourself, but it can also be used to make you more aware of your own behaviour and your own habitual thought processes. Becoming aware is the first step in successful change.

So here is an affirmation to try out on yourself. After every success, every failure, everytime you become self aware, every time you think about it, try to saying to yourself:

'I am **** brilliant at what I do'.

If it is said in a moment of doubt it will inspire you to go on. If it is said after something successful, it will reinforce your feeling of confidence. If it is said after some failure, or some bad outcome, or after not doing something you should, then it will force you to consider why you are so good at being bad. That will bring to mind why you are doing or not doing the thing that is causing the problem, and make you more aware of the circumstances and what was going on in your mind.

After some time you should begin to get a heightened awareness of exactly why you are doing that behaviour, and an insight into how to stop it.

The process is quite simple. The scripts are supplied in pdf format as well as Word format.  This means that you can load the pdf version on to  your iPad and you will be able to use the Table of Contents to go to any script immediately, and you will be able to search the collection by keyword.

To get it on to your iPad you will need to download a file handling app. There are many free apps or you can pay a dollar or so for one of the better paid apps.

Once you have done that you can load your app by emailing the pdf files to yourself as an attachment. Your app will then load the attachments into the app and you will then be able to access the scripts on your iPad easily and quickly.

I discoved that she came from an alcoholic family. This led me to suspect that she would have some form of depression and I started probing gently about that. When we  got to  the questions about black and white thinking she said that she was a procrastinator. She would stay in bed in the morning and her husband would bring her cups of tea, and with every cup she would have a cigarette. She said that sometimes she would stand in front of her clothes closet and not know what to put on, so she would have a cigarette and think about it.

I traced this to the perfectionism associated with B & W thinking. She agreed that rather than take a decision that might be wrong she would put it off, and smoking gave her an excuse to drag it out by another ten minutes. I think that she was fearing the wrath of her parent and wanted not to commit to anything in case it was the wrong action and she would get shouted at and an arguement would ensue.

It seemed that she was mainly smoking to avoid taking action and triggering those old feelings of fear, and that was also the source of her ongoing life long anxiety.

I asked her what she thought the cause was and she immediately said it is all about a home invasion I had when I was a kid and I woke up to find some man sitting on my bed. She was convinced that she had dealt with that, even though her anxiety focussed on night-time, on being left alone and on a fear of someone harming her.

I thought this was an ideal opportunity to try out the therapy recommended by Peter Levine in his book 'In an unspoken voice'. Levine does not mention hypnosis at all but his recommendations lend themselves ideally to application in trance. His belief is that almost all anxiety comes from being in a situation that you feel powerless to escape from. Not dealing with the situation properly at the time leaves you trapped in that feeling for ever.  The symptoms of this client fitted that description completely.

I therefore put her into trance used a modified form of regression. I took her back to the home invasion, but instead of getting her to relive it, I suggested that she focus on the feeling, and then I told her to tense and release the muscles in her shoulders, and then her chest, and so on down her body. I then suggested that she focus on her hands, and to become aware of what her hands wanted to do, and make micromovements as she thought about what she wanted to do. I then got her to imagine what muscle movements she would do if she was to fight the intruder, or she quickly got out of the bed, or if she pushed an alarm button. I took her through various scenarios that I thought might be appropriate ways of dealing with the situation. I tried to get her to talk through what she might have done, but she was unwilling or unable to hold a conversation while in trance.

I then brought her out of trance, and showed her how to go back into trance by herself using self hypnosis, and I told her that this would allow her to escape her chronic anxiety by resetting her feelings back to a calm level.

At the end of the session I asked her what she felt about the micromovements. She told me that had felt a tingling all over her body as she tensed and relaxed. She then said that the feeling of 'waiting for something to happen' that she always had, was gone.

I wonder to what extent the 'cures' that are credited to hypnosis are actually the result of the induction that most therapists use, the Progressive Muscle Relaxation Induction. It may be that it is the progressive tensing and relaxing that are doing the work, and all the 'patter' is actually  irrelevent.  It is something to think about.